Stop Worrying About Search Engine Optimization, and Start Creating Something Worth Finding

Shakespeare wrote that a rose by any other name would surely smell as sweet.  Is the same thing true of domain names?  What I share with you and teach here, is what I know and what I do.  I have recently had a shift in my thinking that will impact my process, and I want to share it with you.

I came to this whole world of blogging and social media, from an internet marketing point of view.  When I sold my business a few years ago, I started researching internet marketing.  I suspect many of you have done, or are doing the same right now.  I read blogs, listen to podcasts, read books and e-books, and take courses.

One of things I was taught, and I did, was to use a keyword-rich domain name (URL) for your website’s address. Since I did this myself, I advised others to do it.   Another thing I was taught was to use social media to drive traffic to my website.  Blogs, podcasts and sites like Facebook and Twitter, have made a lot of people rich because they have found ways to leverage them into generating leads for their businesses.  I started to explore social media.

A funny thing happened to me when I started using these sites though.  I started following and learning from some of the rock stars of social media, like Chris Brogan, Seth Godin, and Gary Vaynerchuk.  They are all very interesting people and great writers.  They have HUGE followings and very successful websites.  They all just use their names as their URL.

I started to take notice of the domain names of some of the other blogs I read; Duct Tape Marketing, Escape Fom Cubicle Nation, Zen Habits, Mashable.  Not a keyword-rich URL in the bunch.  Just really great content that I and many other people are drawn to.  The more I reflected on this, the more I realized that I had it wrong.  I was taking all of this internet marketing knowledge I had, and plugging in business ideas to utilize it.  While this works, it goes against my core business values, my definite major purpose.  This site, StartupDaddy.com, was redirected to home-based-business-startups.com.  This started to eat at me for some reason.  It started to feel disingenuous somehow.

What I really want to do, and now advise and do myself, is to start from the really great business idea, and use the social media and internet marketing strategies to market your great ideas, your interesting content.  Yes, you need to employ good SEO techniques on your website.  You need good keywords in your title, your description, your content.  But get creative with the domain name.  Make it something people want to remember, something that says something about you.  Maybe your own name.

If you notice now, when you look at your browser bar this site says it’s name- StarupDaddy.com, not the keyword-rich domain name.  Because of some very technical things (like losing every listener I have), it took some doing to fix it, but I feel better about it.  It reflects my new focus on just doing what I do, and not worrying so much about Google, or page rank, or SEO.  Again, these things are important, and need attention, but they are not the most important.

From what I have learned, a keyword rich domain name has little impact on your Google position.  I am sure it is a factor, and helps, but not nearly as much as incoming links from other sites that are linking to you because you offer value.  Spend more time and energy on being interesting.  As Seth Godin would say, be remarkable.

Business is an ever changing environment.  As you learn things you need to be able to accept that you may have been wrong and make a change.  If you acted on my advice to use a keyword-rich domain name, don’t worry.  There is still nothing wrong with it, and it may actually be helping you.  For me though, I felt that when people looked at their web browsers, and they saw home-based-business-startups, it said something to them I did not want to say.  I felt it said I value google rank above my message.  That is why I changed it.  I like the name I chose for this site.  So StartupDaddy.com is now just and only that.  It is not a strategy or revenue stream, it is just me, trying to help dads (and moms too) learn how to start a business while they struggle with the time constraints of starting a family.